Microsoft Windows Server licensing scared me again
Two days ago, I was performing migration work. We used to run a few Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Evaluation Edition and the licenses were to expire in the next few days.
I asked for official commercial licenses and I received them a few days later. Then I just wanted to replace the evaluation edition key with an official one…. and when I got this message, I facepalmed…
Yes Datacenter Evaluation edition is actually different from Datacenter edition. Well… Happily I found a work around on technet that I wanted to share with you :
The following operation will require the server to restart
– Open Windows CLI (cmd.exe)
– Type the following commands
DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition
DISM /online /Get-TargetEditions
DISM /online /Set-Edition:editionID /ProductKey:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX /AcceptEula
editionID: ServerDatacenter
XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX: new product key
– Restart the server and let it work until it is finished
I finally obtained a commercial Datacenter Edition.